Winter always has Calgary homeowners dreaming of new projects and ideas for their property. The long weeks spent inside looking at the snowpack with not much else to do gives everyone time to read, research and make plans for the year ahead. Winter is also a great time to think about looking after your property, but it shouldn’t be the only time of year when you think about property maintenance. When it comes to property maintenance Calgary homeowners should have a short checklist of tasks for each season to help keep your property looking at its absolute best all year round.
Spring Property Maintenance Checklist
There’s something magic about the slow transition from the brutal cold of winter to the longer and warmer days of spring. As the snow starts to melt, you’ll want to take of these following property maintenance tasks:
- Ice removal – after a season of snow and ice removal, you’ll find that the snowpack is unevenly distributed across your lawn. You’ll want to use the melting season to break up the bigger sections so that your soil gets the sun’s warmth equally.
- Prepare your beds – the snowpack serves to protect your soil from freezing and burning in the cold weather, but it’ll need some help recovering in time for your planting season. Use trowels or an aerator to turn the soil over, and add a good layer of fertiliser or manure to kick start the microbes in the soil.
- Fertilise your lawn – finally, you’ll have done your best in fall to protect your lawn, but the best lawncare Calgary homeowners do is in spring. Start by running a small rake over the surface to prepare the soil, then add seeds and fertiliser to any bald sections. The spring rains and warm air should do the rest to get your soil ready for summer.
Summer Property Maintenance Checklist
Summer in Calgary is the best time of year in the city. The majority of days are long, sunny and warm and the breezy weather stops the humidity from becoming overwhelming. While summer is all about enjoying your property, you’ll still want to make sure you’re doing the following property maintenance:
- Pet waste removal – more than any disease or genetic issues, unremoved pet waste is the biggest killer of grass and plants in your garden. Your dog’s mess is full of harmful toxins that can leach into the ground if you don’t get to it quick enough. Whether you follow them round with a pooper scooper or hire a team of professional pet waste removers, be sure to keep your garden clear of dog mess.
- Weeding – everyone has a different approach to what they refer to as weeds, but generally it’s any unwanted plant that sucks up water and nutrients from the soil that you’d prefer to be used by your plants and flowers. Weeding is an essential summer task to keep your garden clear and healthy, and you can easily pay younger family members to help you with this boring task
- Landscaping – summer in Calgary is also the perfect time to work on landscaping projects like building new beds or creating new spaces for trees and shrubs in the fall. This is because the soil is warm and workable, and all the microbes and decomposers in your soil are all hard at work to help you get everything ready for the next growing season.
Fall Property Maintenance Checklist
For many Calgary residents, fall feels like a disappointment; a realisation that summer is over and that the long, cold winter is coming. However, it’s also a great time to do a lot of your annual property maintenance as the weather is cooler but the ground hasn’t frozen yet. Here’s a few tasks to get done before the snow comes:
- Full fall cleanup – leaves and dirt tend to get everywhere in fall, and Calgary’s strong and frequent winds certainly don’t help the situation. A fall cleanup operation should leave your lawn and beds clear of all leaves, pinecones and other natural debris. You should also use this time to completely sweep out all the corners and hidden areas of your deck or patio to stop them causing problems with ice or snow build up.
- Touch up the paint – the summer can be harsh on your external paint work on your patio cover, and your pergola stain can also take a beating. Use the warm days to touch up any paint and stain damage. You should also sand down any dings on your deck and fill the holes to make sure that ice can’t get in to do its destructive work in winter.
- Prepare your beds – once you’ve harvested all your vegetables and herbs, and all the flowers have died away, you need to prepare your beds for survival over winter. Start by pulling up any dead plants, and trim down those flowers that need to be pruned. FInally, add a layer of straw, hay or mulch to help your beds retain moisture and avoid being burned by exposure to the snow.
Winter Property Maintenance
Once the snow starts to fall, there’s not much to be done in terms of property maintenance. It’ll be important to stay ahead of the snowfall by watching the weather forecasts closely, and then making sure you have a solid snow removal plan that avoids ice building up on your walkways and driveways.
Getting Professional Help
While winter is a quieter time for actual property maintenance, it’s a great time to talk with Scoop Cut N Shovel about their annual property maintenance subscription plans. For a low monthly fee, our team of professionals will come to your property while you’re at work and take care of all the property maintenance tasks listed above. You can pick and choose specific services for each season, or bundle them all and save with our year round property maintenance packages. Call today to save time and money and find why the best property maintenance strategies are the ones done by someone else.